Speakers and Moderators

Professor Karim Brohi

Professor Karim Brohi is trauma and vascular surgeon with a strong academic focus in translational and clinical research into acute injury care. His trauma surgery practice is based at the Royal London Major Trauma Centre, part of Barts Health NHS Trust and one of the busiest trauma centres in Europe managing severely injured patients from across metropolitan London. Professor Brohi’s research at Queen Mary University of London focuses around the immediate minutes and hours after injury - and how understanding the pathophysiology of this time can produce innovations in therapeutics and device interventions to save lives. He has contributed significantly to the understanding of traumatic coagulopathy, inflammation and organ dysfunction following injury. He is also Clinical Director for Major Trauma for London (which is the largest integrated urban trauma system in the world, managing over 12,000 injuries a year) and chairs the Major Trauma steering group of the four London major trauma operational delivery networks.

Professor Anthony M J Bull, FREng

Professor Anthony Bull has been Head of the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London since 2012. Originally a Mechanical Engineer, Anthony’s conversion to Bioengineering was cemented through his work in orthopaedics and, latterly, in trauma; he holds leadership positions in both. He is Director of the Centre for Blast Injury Studies, today’s host, and the Musculoskeletal Medical Engineering Centre and is an active fundraiser at the institutional level as co-director of the £120million Michael Uren Biomedical Engineering Research Hub.

Anthony’s work and leadership has been recognised through his election to Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He has over 200 peer review publications, several granted patents and currently holds approximately £13m of research grants as PI.

Colonel James E Czarnik

COL James E Czarnik graduated from Ripon College, Wisconsin, in 1989 receiving a BA in Philosophy and Biochemistry. In 1993, he received his Doctorate in Medicine from the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD and was commissioned into the Regular Army as a medical corps officer. He completed a Transitional Internship at Tripler Army Medical Center in 1994 and an Emergency Medicine Residency from 1997-2000 at Brooke Army Medical Center/Wilford Hall Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas. COL Czarnik served for many years on a classified Special Operations medical contingency force, conducting worldwide missions in support of U.S.Counterterrorism operations. His awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Bronze Star Medal (1 Oak Leaf Clusters),the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal (1 Oak Leaf Clusters), Air Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal(2 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Commendation Medal, Joint Service Achievement Medal (1 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Achievement Medal (1 Oak Leaf Clusters), Joint Meritorious Unit Award, Army Superior Unit Award, National Defense Service Medal with two bronze stars, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon and Overseas Service Ribbon. He is blissfully married to Dr Katherine Linnen Czarnik and has four strong young daughters, Sasha, Maddie, Paige and Isabella.

Colonel Michael R Davis, MD FACS

Col Davis grew up in Southern California and did his undergraduate studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He then began his military career when he entered medical school at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD (US Federal Medical School). Following medical school Col Davis entered General Surgery training at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Lackland AFB, TX. While in general surgery training, Col Davis performed a 2 year vascular surgery research fellowship. Following General Surgery training, Col Davis matriculated into Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery training at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.

Col Davis is a member of multiple medical societies including the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. He is board certified in both General Surgery/Trauma and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He was elected a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons in 2010.

Col Davis has deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan where he served as Chief, Reconstructive Surgery. Following deployment, Col Davis transferred to the US Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio, TX on Special Authorization form the Air Force Surgeon General to begin research in advanced reconstructive surgery and regenerative medicine for the benefit of combat injured. In 2013, Col Davis became Deputy Commander of the US Army Institute of Surgical Research and began the RESTOR™ program (Restorative Endeavor for Servicemembers Through Optimization of Reconstruction). Col Davis has served as the Chair of the Scientific Steering Committee for the US Regenerative Medicine Research Portfolio and is currently the Director, US Combat Casualty Care Research Program.

Colonel Kirby R Gross

Kirby R Gross Colonel Medical Corps currently serves as the Director of the Army Trauma Training Detachment at the Ryder Trauma Center of the University of Miami. COL Gross is a trauma/critical care surgeon whose other garrison leadership positions have included: Trauma Director at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC before Army and Navy joined at the Bethesda campus in 2011; Director of the Joint Trauma System and Division Chief of the Defense Medical Readiness Training Institute, both at Fort Sam Houston. COL Gross has also previously served as the Trauma Consultant to the Office of the Surgeon General. COL Gross has deployed seven times and on two occasions served as Director the Joint Theater Trauma System for a total duration of 18 months. He has served as Commander of the 772d Forward Surgical Team and Deputy Commander for Clinical Services of the 86th Combat Support Hospital. He has provided care to combat casualties at Role 1, Role 2 and Role 3 locations.

Major General Barbara R Holcomb

Major General Barbara R. Holcomb is a 1987 Distinguished Military Graduate of Seattle University Army ROTC where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing. She earned a Master's degree in Nursing Administration from the University of Kansas, a Master's level Certification in Emergency and Disaster Management from American Military University and a Master's in Military Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Major General Holcomb's awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal (1OLC), Legion of Merit (2OLC), Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal (5OLC), Army Commendation Medal (3OLC), Army Achievement Medal (1OLC), National Defense Service Ribbon, Iraq Campaign Medal (2 campaign stars), Kosovo Campaign Medal, NATO Service Ribbon (Kosovo), Southwest Asia Service Medal (3 campaign stars), Kuwait Liberation Medal (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait), the Meritorious Unit Commendation Ribbon (1OLC), and the Expert Field Medical Badge. She is a member of the Order of Military Medical Merit.

Colonel Anthony E Johnson, MD FAOA

Dr Anthony E Johnson is currently Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at San Antonio Military Medical Center as well as the Custodian of the Military Orthopaedic Trauma Registry. In his role as Chairman, he is responsible for the strategic planning, business plan management, academic performance and the daily operations of the largest Department of Orthopaedic Surgery in the Department of Defense with a $27 million budget and $39.7 million clinical production and a total staff of 167 personnel to include 23 integrated Air Force and Army surgeons, 36 residents & 8 orthopaedic physician assistants. As the Custodian of the Military Orthopaedic Trauma Registry, he is responsible for the oversight of a $10.2 million program dedicated to improving the treatments, outcomes and complications sustained by Warriors with Extremity War Injuries. He has deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom (2006), Iraqi Freedom (2007), and New Dawn (2010) as a member of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and currently serves as the Orthopaedic SME for the Expeditionary Resuscitative Surgical Teams – Africa (ERST-A).

Surgeon Commander Mansoor Khan

Surgeon Commander Mansoor Khan is a Military Trauma Surgeon at the North West London Major Trauma Centre based at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. He has served on multiple military operations, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Mansoor graduated from King’s College School of Medicine and Dentistry in 2000. He completed his Registrar training in the South Yorkshire Deanery and undertook a 1-year Trauma Fellowship at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Centre in Baltimore. He was appointed to the position of Senior Lecturer in General Surgery to the Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma in February 2016 and is currently the Consultant Advisor in General Surgery to Medical Director-General Royal Navy.

In December 2016, he was appointed as the Clinical Lead for ED/Trauma and Acute Care for the NIHR DEC London. His interests include Trauma Education, Improving Trauma Care, Primary Injury Prevention and Motorsports Medicine. Current projects include methods of intervention for Non-compressible Torso Haemorrhage, Spinal injury prevention under the auspices of the FIA/CBIS, POC Devices and Physiological Sensors.

Major Peter A Le Feuvre

Major Peter Le Feuvre currently serves as a physiotherapist within the British Forces in Germany. Between 2006 - 2014 he worked at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine and then DMRC Headley Court as the Clinical Lead Physiotherapist for Complex Trauma. During this time he was involved in developing the rehabilitation pathway for combat casualties. Using his knowledge of trauma management, and experience in both Afghanistan and Iraq. he also devised and delivered the pre-deployment trauma training for Military Physiotherapist's deploying on operations.

He believes fervently in the need to embrace novel and creative approaches when delivering holistic care. In particular, his work compelling the virtues of a functionally centred rehabilitation approach which harnesses the psychosocial benefits of the outdoors, has been widely embraced at Headley Court. In January he will commence his PhD with CBIS in which he is seeking to capture the long term functional and social outcomes of military and veteran amputees. This work will be used to inform, develop and evidence a future rehabilitation pathway for military amputees.

Professor Alison McGregor

Professor Alison McGregor is a Professor of Musculoskeletal Biodynamics at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on the musculoskeletal system with respect to mechanisms of injury; effects of injury on function and management. She has investigated injury/disease management using a variety of clinical and biomechanical approaches. Alison was a lead investigator in the Medical Engineering Solutions in Osteoarthritis Centre where she led an initiative into the use of technology to further rehabilitation. She currently leads the Rehabilitation Theme of Imperial’s Centre for Blast Injury Studies and currently supervises work on smart amputee sockets and the prevention of osteoporosis in above knee amputates.

Professor Todd McKinley, MD

Todd McKinley, MD, is a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Anatomy and Cell Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Minnesota. He received his M.D. from the University of Minnesota followed by Orthopaedic Residency training at the University of California at Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. Following residency, he completed a Research Fellowship at UC Davis investigating basic science models of articular fractures followed by a clinical trauma fellowship at the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. He joined the faculty at the University of Iowa in 1999 and became a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Iowa in 2006. He has been a funded investigator since 2002 receiving funding from the CDC, NIH/NIAMS, and the DOD. His research interests include multiply injured patients and posttraumatic osteoarthritis.

Squadron Leader Phill Pearce

Squadron Leader Phill Pearce is a Royal Air Force general surgical trainee with clinical interests in emergency general surgery and trauma. Following medical degrees from Cambridge University and Kings College London, and a period as an RAF general duties medical officer, he has been undertaking his surgical training in London. He commenced a PhD within the Centre for Blast Injury Studies in 2015 and is investigating the visceral response to tertiary blast loading. His research interests also include injury scoring and trauma surgical training.

Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin “Kyle” Potter, MD FACS

Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin “Kyle” Potter, MD, FACS currently serves as Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery and Professor and Vice Chair (Orthopaedics) in the Uniformed Services University - Walter Reed Department of Surgery. He is also the Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon for the Amputee Program at Walter Reed, and a musculoskeletal oncology consultant at the National Institutes of Health. Additionally, Dr. Potter serves on the Society of Military Orthopaedic Surgeons Board of Directors as the 1st Vice President and the government steering committees for the Peer-Reviewed Orthopaedic Research Program and the BADER Consortium.

LTC Potter deployed to Afghanistan in 2011 and again in 2016, serving as the Chief Orthopaedic Surgeon of the Task Force 115 Combat Support Hospital (Role III) at Camp Dwyer, Helmand Province and subsequently with the 936th and 629th Forward Surgical Teams at FOB Fenty, Jalalabad Airfield, Nangarhar Province. Dr. Potter has authored or co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications, as well as numerous invited manuscripts and book chapters. He recently co-edited the 4th edition of the Atlas of Amputations and Limb Deficiencies for the AAOS, and serves as a Deputy Editor for Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma. His research interests include trauma-related amputation techniques and outcomes (including osseointegration and targeted muscle reinnervation), heterotopic ossification, predictive modeling of trauma and oncologic outcomes, management of metastatic disease of bone, and bone and soft tissue sarcoma treatment. Dr. Potter is an honor graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. Kyle lives in Bethesda, MD with his wife, Michelle, an emergency medicine physician, and their 3 children.

Dr Jason Wilken, PT

Jason Wilken PT, PhD is Associate Professor and Director of Collaborative Research and Development in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at the University of Iowa. Prior to joining the University of Iowa he was the founding Director of the Military Performance Laboratory at the Center for the Intrepid, Brooke Army Medical Center, JBSA Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Senior Scientist for the Extremity Trauma and Amputation Center of Excellence and adjunct faculty for the US Army-Baylor University Doctoral Program in Physical Therapy. While at Brooke Army Medical Center he developed a well-funded and patient centric research program focused on maximizing physical function in individuals who have been injured during military service. His efforts and publications focus primarily on the development and evaluation of advanced prosthetic and orthotic technologies, virtual reality based interventions, clinically relevant outcomes assessments, and development of novel approaches to enhance walking stability.

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Wright

Lt Col Chris Wright is the UK Surgeon General’s appointed advisor for Pre-Hospital Emergency Care (PHEC), charged with leading the development of the nascent sub-speciality (PHEM) and advising on all aspect of emergency care in the field to the Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and UK Special Forces. He is a consultant in Emergency Medicine based at St Mary’s Hospital: the North West London Major Trauma Centre. He graduated from Bristol University and joined 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment as their Regimental Medical Officer in time for their entry into Kabul in 2001 and he went on to become a veteran of twelve tours of Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan, including three tours as a Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) Medical Officer. He 2011 he completed a Fellowship with London’s Air Ambulance and currently flies with Kent/Surrey/Sussex Air ambulance to maintain his experience. Chris has multiple publications in the field of pre-hospital care, and currently lives in London with his wife Jenny, and two daughters.